I must say, Bruno hasn’t really impressed me ever since he came to F1 back in 2010. Even this year, despite having a good car, he’s been average at best apart from China and Malaysia.

However, where do you think he’d be if he never missed out on 8 years of his racing career?

He had plenty of karting experience in his early childhood. In 1989, Bruno start karting at the age of 5. His family said he was very good and was already able to beat his uncle in kart races when he was only 9.

However, on May 1st 1994, when Bruno was 10, his uncle tragically died in a crash at Imola, his family put an early end to his career by forcing him to quit karting.
Bruno didn’t return to racing until 2002, when he was 18. After only 2 years of experience in proffessional karting, he moved up to junior Formula to make up for the time he lost.

Now, let’s change history. Let’s just say a few months after Ayrton’s tragic death, his family got over it, and allowed Bruno to race again. Let’s say he never missed out on karting in his teens, and when he was 17, he moved up to junior Formula leagues. This would allow Bruno to gain a lot more racing experience at much younger age.

He would still have the same resources, money and sponsorship backing that he has; but he’d be a much better driver, no question.

Had that been the case, where do you think Bruno Senna would be right now?

I’m not sure I agree with what @roald says about not having as much natural talent as the rest of the grid, I think he does have a lot of natural talent, but he’s less refined and experienced, due to the long time out he spent when he could have been racing (had his family let him). I don’t think the time out did him any favours, and who knows, maybe he would be a much better driver without it, but I still think he is a talented driver and as deserving as anyone to be on the F1 grid.

I think he could be much stronger anyway. Who knows where he could have ended up.

I will take issue with this though:
“Even this year, despite having a good car, he’s been average at best apart from China and Malaysia.”
That’s 2 out of 5 races where he’s had stand out drives. That isn’t a bad quantity. If he kept that up then by the end of the season you’d be able to name 8 occasions where he did a great job- as long as he cuts down on weekends as poor as Spain then that isn’t bad at all.

EDIT: I agree with @f1alex about being more refined being the biggest change.

If he did full time karting in his teenage years, he would probably have already entered Junior Formula by 2000, when he was 16; and by 2005, when he was 21, he’d be in F1 already.
He would be a much better driver than he is now, and even today he isn’t particularly bad either. Who knows where he’d be today. In my opinion he would be amongst the very best on the grid.

He’s not bad, but I’m not sure he’s good enough to be in F1. Call me cynical, but I just don’t think he’d have got as far as he has with his famous name. I’m not saying he wouldn’t have got anywhere, but his name as certainly played a part in getting him into F1.

I would not be at all surprised if he gets dropped at the end of the season, if he doesn’t improve soon. In my opinion, Buemi and Algusuari deserved a better chance, and I’d like to see them have the opportunity to drive a decent car.

However, where do you think he’d be if he never missed out on 8 years of his racing career?

Out of the sport. he probably would have had his chance, failed to impress, and been quietly dropped.

I’ve noticed that a lot of Senna’s fans are very quick to point to a) Ayrton’s comments about him, b) his eight-year hiatus, and c) the way he drove for HRT in order to excuse his terrible performances since Spa last year.

Out of the sport. he probably would have had his chance, failed to impress, and been quietly dropped.

Are you sure? He is a decent driver now, he was out-scoring Maldonado 14-4 before Spain. If he had the racing experience that guys like Vettel, Hamilton or Rosberg had; he’d be much better than he is now.

I’ve noticed that a lot of Senna’s fans…

I’m not a Senna fan. I am more than willing to criticize him if he under performs.

Yes, I’m sure. “Decent” simply isn’t good enough in Formula 1 these days. Senna might have out-scored Maldonado 14-4 before Spain, but he should have had twice as many points. He made costly mistakes in Australia, Malaysia, Bahrain and Spain. Yes, I know Malaysia was one of his best results – but he lost his front wing on the first lap, and only recovered because the team put him on wets. If he’d kept his nose clean and changed tyres, he could have been fighting for a podium or even the race win because he was the only driver who could match Alonso and Perez’s pace on a regular basis by the end of the race.

I think he meant that as he’s decent now, he could be much better without such a large gap in his CV- as the topic of the thread suggests. Do you really not think that with better experience he may have reached F1 as a more complete, less crash-happy driver? You said yourself he has the pace on occasion- a longer racing career might have allowed him to be more consistently fast and a cleaner wheel-to-wheel racer.

You underestimate the difference racing experience can make. You honestly think that nearly a decade of extra racing experience would not have helped him? All the best drivers on the grid (Alonso, Hamilton, Vettel, etc…) all have a lot of karting experience, and start racing at very young age. Is that a coincidence to you? Name one driver in the past decade who didn’t start racing until he was 18, and was successful in F1. I bet you can’t name one. Remember, you learn the most and quickest as a child.

I guarantee you, if Vettel or Hamilton had entirely missed out on racing in their teenage years, they would be no better drivers than Bruno, if not worse.

I am well aware that a gap in a driver’s experience can take the edge off their skills. However, I think Bruno Senna is such a poor driver that even if he had been racing for those eight years, it would not have made enough of a difference.

He’s out of his league, and the only sensible course of action is to take him out of the car.

To suggest that a driver, who is admittedly rough around the edges, is currently completely not at the level to be in F1, despite some strong performances, and that you don’t even begin to suggest he might be even a little better with more experience makes it sound like you have a vendetta against him. Even the drivers I dislike most, I can at least accept they have some talent and redeeming features.

The reason why I’m suggesting Senna isn’t good enough for Formula 1 is because since he joined Renault at Spa last year, he has made one major mistake every other race. His average is worse than Lewis Hamilton’s when Hamilton was mired in whatever it was that was getting to him last year.

It’s pretty telling that Schumacher admitted he wanted to get past Senna as soon as possible in Spain because he didn’t want to spend too long within range of the Williams. If Schumacher thinks you’re so rough around the edges that a mistake that has the potential to take another driver out of the race is almost an inevitablity, I’d say you’re screwed.